


Under Every Grief

by Leonawriter



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Implied Violence, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Pre-Devil May Cry 4, but we knew that anyway, she was probably an awesome lady, tbh I'm mostly salty she doesn't get love in canon, virgil is a mess, we are ignoring the so called Vergil missions, written before going through 5 so forgive if there's mistakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Some people leave us simply by refusing to move on. Vergil feels that she should have come with him; she wishes that he would have stayed.In the end, none of them get what they want, or what they need.
Relationships: Nero's Mother/Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Kudos: 28





	Under Every Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. 
> 
> "Under every grief & pine  
> Runs a joy with silken twine..."

"The books on these shelves over here are the ones that everyone agrees are more fiction than fact. The ones over there are more factual and generally thought to be historical accounts."

That was the first thing she'd said to him.

In fact, at first he hadn't even realised that he wasn't alone in the Order's library, which had been just as much of an embarrassment as anything. He should have known, should have noticed. 

The memory of not just his mother, but also his father nearly tripping over him when he'd lost track of time reading and hadn't even thought to find a chair to sit in passed through his mind, and he scowled. Those times were past, long gone, and were no longer relevant. He was here to investigate the history of this place, and its ties to Sparda, not poetry and classic literature.

Still, he had appreciated the advice, and she hadn't disturbed him after that, apparently too lost in her own reading material to even look up.

It was when he had gone through an entire pile of books that he'd started to become frustrated. At Fortuna, for having shoddy record keeping, and for revering a demon they knew so little about. At Sparda himself, at his family, at _himself_ for not being able to _focus_ -

"They're dry reading, I should have warned you. Sorry. Maybe you should rest your eyes and you'll find what you were looking for when you come back? If you leave the books there, they'll be waiting for you. I'll make sure. Promise not to peek, either."

He should have just ignored her. Perhaps he should even have threatened her to get out of the library and leave him in peace.

Instead, he found himself nodding curtly and gathering himself up.

_A walk and some fresh air ought to clear that head of yours._

The city had a problem with demons. Perhaps he could vent some of his frustrations on them, even if they weren't much of a threat or challenge to his skills.

...

Even though he'd told himself that he wouldn't get attached, that he was only passing through, by the end of the day he knew her name - Rachel - and her preference in literature.

By the end of the week he knew what the inside of her home looked like - nothing particularly impressive, and in fact rather small and uninspiring, except for the personal touches - the fact that she couldn't cook, and when he admitted finally that he had been resting in the dark corners of the library after it was supposed to be shut, the shape of her sofa.

He's begun to build up habits, he realises, when she says _you aren't going to be staying for long, are you._

It stops him short.

It takes him longer than it should have done to agree, to say that no, he wasn't, that he'd never intended to stay, that he _would_ be leaving as soon as he'd finished his work here.

He turns back to his books, the libraries books, telling their stories of the power his father had wielded-

"You could," she say. "Stay, I mean." He freezes. The light he's reading by flickers in his eye and turns into fire-shadows. "For as long as you like. I just mean... never mind. I shouldn't have asked. You've clearly got more important things to do."

He tells himself she's right, and tries his best to ignore how tempting the idea of _belonging_ somewhere is.

It's not as though there isn't enough on the island that reminds him how unrealistic that idea would be, with constant reminders of a misguided people worshipping Sparda as a _god_ conflicting with his own very real memories of the man.

...

He saves her life when she strays a little too far from safety one day, apparently having decided to try and read in the open air and gone too far.

He shouts at her as she shakes, as she cries, expects her to go running back home after having seen him show his demonic capabilities, and doesn't know what to do, how to react, when she instead throws herself onto him, getting her tears on the intricate embroidery of his clothes.

They're mostly silent on the way back, after finding the book that she'd dropped and that was miraculously unharmed. Silent apart from the way that he can still hear her uneven breathing, and see her sniffling into her handkerchief every so often.

He himself is frustrated that his plans were interrupted. There was something he had wanted to inspect further in, but now he was walking her back home and grinding his teeth at the possibilities that kept presenting themselves.

What if he hadn't arrived in time.

What if she'd come out earlier.

What if she'd gone further.

What if he hadn't been able to find her-

It makes him feel powerless, helpless in the face of chance, and he tells himself that he needs to _leave_ , that he can't stay, because he has to do what he had come here for and that was all. He can't do anything else.

His own power alone isn't enough. He needs more. More, to make sure that things like _chance_ and _luck_ have nothing to do with it next time anything like that happens again.

(He doesn't realise he's thinking of this as being _again_ already until it's too late. He'll always wonder what he would have done if he'd caught himself that much earlier, but that's another thing he's helpless against - the past, and being unable to change it.)

...

 _I'm making a mistake,_ he thinks, some time later.

Instead of lying on her sofa, he's lying in her bed, under a quilt that looks and feels as if it has to have been made by hand. He can still see his clothes, his coat lying on the back of a chair as if it belonged there, and Yamato leaning up against the wall and reflecting the sunlight off its sheath. 

He feels warm. He feels comfortable. He feels safe.

 _This isn't going to last,_ his instincts tell him. 

The world had come crashing down around him the last time he had thought that he was safe, after all.

...

He doesn't know which side of his mind he should listen to, after that.

He wants to forget and just allow himself this small comfort, a moment of peace. But he also knows that without more power, any such moment of peace will be as fleeting as the last, or the next - flying out of his grasp like smoke in the wind.

She burns the toast on the grill, and she laughs about it.

He has to leave when the realisation that she had been calling his name for the past several minutes makes him feel a disturbing sort of nausea, a vertigo he can't get rid of-

He doesn't come back until well after moonrise, having spent most of his frustrations out on the local demon population, leaving dents and rends in the areas further afield.

He _wants_ so badly, he _wants_ and he doesn't know how to express exactly what, can't put the words to it all no matter how good he is with deciphering words or using them, because the simple idea that she keeps bringing up - _stay, won't you? -_ is one that he can't agree to.

He screams, a roar of fury and rage against the world itself, making his throat raw afterward in the silence of the slowly dissipating demonic bodies.

If anyone had heard him, he thinks as he makes his way back, none of the tension relieved, he wouldn't have been surprised if they had mistaken him for one of the demons he had slain.

...

For the first time, he asks her if she would come with him, when he leaves.

They're in the library. The pile of books in front of him has been whittled down, and in just a day or so he'll be done. He won't need to stay on the island, in Fortuna, any longer. 

She hesitates. 

"It was only a suggestion," he says brusquely. Echoing her own words from earlier that month.

The realisation that he's been there nearly a month in itself is enough to make his heart do something strange in his chest - some odd mix of contentment and dread. He's been here too long.

"I know," she says. "Thank you," she says. 

It isn't an agreement.

 _I can't protect you if you aren't there with me, if you won't let me, if I leave and you don't come too,_ he wants to say, but the words die in his throat.

...

"This is my home," she says the next day, "this, and that little place... it's mine, and it's all I have left of my family, and I know you have important things to do, but I can't just leave all of this behind."

 _Family,_ he thinks, _is overrated._

Something tells him that this is a bad thing to say, but he can't keep the bitterness out of his face, and he knows that she's seen when her face falls.

...

Vergil leaves, and when he does it is without saying goodbye.

It hurts more than it should. She had seen it coming, after all, and she shouldn't have expected anything else. But no matter the face she puts up in front of her neighbours and the pride she keeps around the Order, she can't help but break down in tears when she gets home again that night.

The sight of her couch being completely empty, two mugs on the table from the previous night that she still hadn't put away yet, they're all things that make her feel dizzyingly like he is both only gone for a while, that he'll be back later that night, and also that no matter what either of them had or hadn't said, there would never be a next meeting, never be a next time, that he'd never come back-

She _misses_ him, and he's barely even gone.

...

She looks at the statue of Sparda - _It doesn't look anything like what I remember of him, nor of any other sources. Ridiculous is what it is_ \- and wonders what the man would have made of all of this. 

By Vergil's account, the god - the _demon_ \- was dead, now. They were worshipping a demon that wasn't even alive anymore, who had chosen to live as a man. Some part of her felt that the sheer realisation of this was more blasphemous than any of the fictitious stories that the storytellers had come up with over the thousands of years Fortuna had existed, but she couldn't bring herself to feel any shame or guilt. 

She had met his son, after all.

She had _fallen in love with_ his son.

 _If you were alive,_ she wonders, _what would you have thought of me? Would you have been happy with me? Would you have told him to stay, or would he have still left?_

It ultimately didn't matter what he thought, though, she realises emptily. 

...

They ask her who the father is, when she starts to show, and she knows that there is only one person it _could_ be, because she's only been with one person. 

She doesn't tell them his name.

Enough people, she thinks, would know the stories - or that there will be stories - for it to be safe. Vergil had worried about protecting her, about not being powerful enough, and perhaps if she didn't draw attention to the child's heritage, then they wouldn't _need_ to be protected.

Except that not drawing attention was the one thing she didn't seem capable of doing.

When everyone lived on an island community, sooner or later everyone knew everyone else, and it wasn't long until they all realised that the father had to be either someone from further afield, possibly on the mainland, or that whoever it was... simply wasn't coming clean about it.

It only took a little longer for the rumours to start.

The dirty looks, the shuffles away in public places, the withdrawal of help when she needed it the most.

...

She named him _Nero_ , wrapped him in the quilt her mother had made, one of the only things she had left of her family that she could give to him, and left him on the doorstep of the orphanage.

_If I can help you by doing this, if you can live a better life at all... then it'll be worth it. It has to be worth it._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just going to say again how I've gone through the first four games and several episodes of the anime but none of the side materials other than what the wiki has to offer, and knowledge of 5 through osmosis and so on; I did my best to make this fit with what I know and what I figure makes sense, but I'm gonna take it as a given that there might be errors in some places.
> 
> Also, I am aware of what the kids bullying Nero told him, but that's a biased account. Just because a bully says something, doesn't make it true.
> 
> This really only started with me trying to imagine the kind of person Nero's mother (who is named after a character in Dante's Inferno here) could have been, and a mix of the first few scenes. The rest just carried on from there as a sort of... "well, I can't just leave it at that, can I?".


End file.
